Hi Friend,

This is what the Kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.” (Mark 4:26-28 NIV)

One of the secrets of life is discovering the systems of nature that make life work and then building a machine that works in harmony with the created universe. How many years did man suffer plowing behind a mule before he understood how to apply internal combustion to motion? How many backs were broken before someone discovered the system of hydraulics? And who knows that some tinkerer uncovered those secrets 1,000 years earlier and the world refused to believe?

The systems were there all the time and they would have worked as well in 1000 B.C.E. as they do in the 21st Century.  They went unnoticed until someone did the work of discovery and the rest of the world listened.

Several years ago, Donna and I flew to Jamaica to celebrate the Feast of Trumpets. It was an absolutely clear sky at 40,000 ft. when a colorful Air Jamaica approached us at the same altitude. From the ground we perceive planes as slow-moving but up close at an approach speed of over 1,000 miles an hour reality was clear. We were only two of 400 passengers in pressurized metal cylinders flying nearly 7 miles above the ocean at more than 500 miles an hour.

It’s the stuff science fiction is made of — but it works — and it would have worked in Adam’s day. Passengers on 35,000 flights a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year are adequate testimony. The fact is you are safer flying across the ocean on a commercial jet than driving to the neighborhood supermarket because the right systems work.

The fascinating thing is that “many” systems work together in near perfection on a daily basis to sustain man’s existence. Electrical, hydraulic, navigation, even an air conditioning system, all work together to enable a 200-ton behemoth to lumber down the runway and defy gravity by lifting off the ground. And that occurs thanks to another system of air flow called Bernoulli’s principle.  There’s a reason an airplane has wings even though you can’t see the air flowing over the surface.

You can’t see the fluid in the plane’s hydraulic lines any more than you can see electricity flowing through the wires of your home. The electricity coursing through those wires keeps the refrigerator running day and night all by itself, without any help or thought from you. Jesus likened the Kingdom of God to the way plants grow whether man is awake or asleep. Once initiated the system is quite capable of working without any effort or intervention from man.

One of the most powerful unseen systems is also one of the most overlooked.  In his book “Wealth and Poverty” author George Gilder presents a compelling argument that Christian ethics is the basis for national wealth. He asserts that work, family, and faith have created wealth out of poverty in America. “It is this supply-side moral vision that underlies all the economic arguments of Wealth and Poverty,” he wrote. “By contrast, the chief cause of poverty in a free environment is the breakup of the nuclear family and the increase of demand-side economics.”

According to Gilder, family is the system at the foundation of a nation’s economy. It’s the engine that makes it run. Love of family provides a huge incentive for a man to work. He is motivated to provide housing, buy food, clothing and even pay taxes to build schools and support community services. Supplying needs causes the economy to flow.

The disintegration of the family in America is one of the most significant crises we face. Across the country certain minority communities have an illegitimacy rate of over 70 percent. In some of the largest inner-city communities, the illegitimacy rate is over 95 percent.

The family “system” is a God-created reality as real as the law of aerodynamics.  No nation, no government, no amount of money can ever make a commercial jet fly with only one wing.  None of those factors can make a country succeed when the family breaks down.

All of this is important to understand how nature and nature’s God works. Family was created by God — not man. We get a glimpse of God from observing the systems He created. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…. (Romans 1:20 NIV)

Surely God exerted more time and effort in designing a man than a lily of the field, which blossoms in a day and the next day is gone. One of the focal points of the Bible is the time God spoke to the Israelites from Mt. Sinai to deliver the Ten Commandments. When did He ever gather trees and flowers together to teach them His way? When were trees and flowers commanded to assemble for worship or travel three days journey into the desert to celebrate a Feast? That God even cares that man would assemble to worship Him is significant.

Jesus tells us to examine the “lilies of the field” to understand how God works. It takes effort for a scientist to dissect a flower to understand its structure. Should man exert less effort to understand God’s design for how man ought to live?  Men overlooked the genetic structure for centuries until Gregor Mendel was able to determine the genetics of a plant by studying the results of his experiments. It took thousands of wind tunnel experiments for the Wright brothers to understand how an air foil works to create heavier than air powered flight.

As the world witnesses the insanity of rioters burning Bibles while destroying cities, the irony is too powerful to miss.  The words of the Apostle Paul to the Romans literally scream at us today,  “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting….”  (Romans 1:28)  What were the things that these people did?  Among other things, Paul says they were sexually immoral, wicked, coveters, malicious, “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit…haters of God, violent, proud….”

Can it be — that 2,000 years ago a man could write a more apt description of America?

Until next time,

Jim O’Brien